from the sorry-thomas dept

You'll recall, of course, that prior to the GDPR, there was a big case against Google in the EU that created, out of thin air, a "right to be forgotten" (perhaps, more accurately, "a right to be delinked") saying that for certain classes of information that showed up in Google's search index, it should be treated as personal data that had to be delinked from that user's name as no longer relevant. This never made any sense at all. A search result is not like out-of-date customer database info, yet that's how the Court of Justice in the EU treated it. Unfortunately, with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect earlier this year, the "right to be forgotten" was even more officially coded into law. We've noted recently, there have been a few attempts to use the GDPR to delete public information on American sites, and now we at Techdirt have been hit with what appears to be just such an attempt.

This particular attempt goes back to some previous attempts under the pre-GDPR "right to be forgotten" setup. We need to dig into the history a bit to understand the details. You see, soon after the floodgates opened on delinking names from Google, we wrote about an article in the NY Times discussing how five of its articles had been delinked via RTBF claims. It was not 100% clear who had made the requests, but we did highlight some of the names and stories, including one where we called the removal "questionable." It involved a NY Times article from 2002 about a legal action by the FTC which went after a group of companies allegedly run by a guy named Thomas Goolnik. The companies -- TLD Network, Quantum Management and TBS Industries -- were accused of "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" by selling domains that did not exist at the time (specifically, they were trying to sell domains using top level domains that did not exist, including .sex, .bet, .brit, and .scot.)

The FTC eventually settled with Goolnik and the companies with some significant concessions:

The settlement bars the defendants from making misrepresentations about the usability of domain names or about the nature of any product or service they sell over the Internet. The settlement also bars the defendants from failing to clearly and conspicuously disclose material limitations or conditions on the usability or functionality of domain names. The settlement bars the defendants from selling customer lists. In addition, the defendants will turn over as much as $300,000 being held in merchant accounts for consumer redress. Redress payments will be available to consumers in the UK and other countries, as well as the United States. The settlement also contains record-keeping requirements to allow the FTC to monitor compliance with the court's order.

This seems like information that is very much in the public interest. Someone, however, doesn't think so. There are many indications that that "someone" is Thomas Goolnik. Ten months after our article talking about the NY Times article about Google delinking their story about Thomas Goolnik's legal troubles with the FTC, wereceived a notification from Google that our article about the NY Times article had also been delinked under a RTBF request. So we wrote about that. A week later, we received a notice that this new article had also been delinked via a RTBF request.

In that post, in September of 2015, we were extremely clear to anyone from Google looking over that post that it was not about Goolnik's earlier activities (which we still believed were in the public's interest), but specifically about Thomas Goolnik's current actions -- specifically an action to abuse the RTBF process to try to hide the fact that he was credibly accused by the FTC of unfair or deceptive practices, leading to a substantial settlement. Since Google had already memory holed two of our articles on the subject, we even included "a special note to the Google RTBF reviewer reading" that post:

We are purposely not mentioning the details of the original story that Thomas Goolnik would no longer like to be associated with. Even if you believe that information is no longer relevant, this article does not discuss that. Instead, it discusses newsworthy and relevant information about Thomas Goolnik today, which is that he's filing a series of right to be forgotten requests to Google on any story that mentions his attempts to use the RTBF to delete his history. The original EU ruling clearly states that that when a search engine is evaluating a RTBF request, that it should see if the data is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed." This is not about irrelevant information from the past. This is about what appears to have happened this week or last.

Anyway, on Wednesday, three years later, we received... a new notification, that that third article had now been delinked under a RTBF request.

To: Webmaster of https://www.techdirt.com/,

Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, Google can no longer show one or more pages from your site in Google Search results. This only affects responses to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers that might appear on your pages. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.

Who could possibly want to make such a request? There would be substantial evidence that it is Thomas Goolnik. While Google does not name who specifically made the requests, the fact that every post we've ever had mentioning Thomas Goolnik (minus this one... so far) ends up getting delinked in Google provides pretty strong clues that Thomas Goolnik is continuing to use highly questionable RTBF claims to try to delete news coverage of his history and his recent actions.

Once again, if you are a Google RTBF reviewer there is no reason under either the original RTBF rules or the GDPR right to erasure rules that this article should be delinked from anyone's name, but especially Thomas Goolnik's. It is about public, relevant, newsworthy information concerning Thomas Goolnik, including his ongoing attempts to use the right to be forgotten to erase a substantial legal settlement he had with the FTC concerning "unfair or deceptive practices" which makes its continued existence very much in the public interest.

from the we-await-next-week's-notification dept

Last week we wrote about receiving our very first Right To Be Forgotten notice from Google, disappearing an earlier post that talked about articles in the NY Times that had been disappeared thanks to other RTBF requests. Yes, someone used a RTBF request to remove our article about the RTBF which was referencing other articles that someone had removed via a RTBF request.

And... yesterday we received a notification that this new article was also chucked down the memory hole thanks to a RTBF request, so that anyone who searches on a particular name in Europe will no longer see that article either. At this point, it's fairly clear that it's Thomas Goolnik who is making all of these RTBF requests, as he's the only individual named. We don't think either of our articles should be removed even under the EU's laws that allow for a RTBF, because those laws only apply to out of date/irrelevant information, and the fact that Goolnik has just now made a RTBF request in an attempt to censor us and to edit his own Google results is not obsolete information and is entirely relevant and newsworthy.

I figure it's highly likely that it won't be long before we get a notice telling us that this article, too, has been removed, so I'd like to add a special note to the Google RTBF reviewer reading this post: We are purposely not mentioning the details of the original story that Thomas Goolnik would no longer like to be associated with. Even if you believe that information is no longer relevant, this article does not discuss that. Instead, it discusses newsworthy and relevant information about Thomas Goolnik today, which is that he's filing a series of right to be forgotten requests to Google on any story that mentions his attempts to use the RTBF to delete his history. The original EU ruling clearly states that that when a search engine is evaluating a RTBF request, that it should see if the data is "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in the light of the time that has elapsed." This is not about irrelevant information from the past. This is about what appears to have happened this week or last.

from the going-to-dredge-this-up-again dept

Well, well. Just a few days ago, we wrote about the fact that Google was being asked to "forget" articles about the right to be forgotten, under new right to be forgotten requests... and suddenly we've been notified that a Techdirt article about the right to be forgotten has been similarly stuffed down the memory hole*. The article in question, is our story from last fall about the NY Times writing about the right to be forgotten requests that resulted in NY Times articles disappearing from some searches. The NYT detailed what each story was about and it wasn't too difficult to figure out who was likely trying to make sure the articles were no longer linked to their names.

It would appear that one of those individuals similarly has sent in this request -- but that's completely bogus, as we'll explain in a moment. First up, the notice:

Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, we are no longer able to show one or more pages from your site in our search results in response to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.

These pages have not been blocked entirely from our search results, and will continue to appear for queries other than those specified by individuals in the European data protection law requests we have honored. Unfortunately, due to individual privacy concerns, we are not able to disclose which queries have been affected.

Please note that in many cases, the affected queries do not relate to the name of any person mentioned prominently on the page. For example, in some cases, the name may appear only in a comment section.

Despite the claim that it might be someone in the comments, that seems unlikely here. Remember, the NYT article suggested who may have made the original requests, and it appears that person was likely now trying to cover up that fact. One of the individuals that the NYT story original wrote about was one Thomas Goolnik. Here's what the NY Times wrote in its original piece:

One Times article that is being shielded from certain searches in Europe is a report from 2002 about a decision by a United States court to close three websites that the federal government accused of selling an estimated $1 million worth of unusable Web addresses. The complaint named three British companies, TLD Network, Quantum Management and TBS Industries, as well as two men who it said controlled the companies: Thomas Goolnik and Edward Harris Goolnik of London.

The case was later settled. Thomas Goolnik did not respond to messages left via social networking sites.

The NYT suggested that there was a decent likelihood that Thomas Goolnik made the original request. It seems likely that Goolnik made this new request as well. I just did a search from the US on US Google for Thomas Goolnik's name and the NY Times piece shows up as result number two. If you go to page two, the second item is our Techdirt story on the NY Times story. Yet, if you go to Google UK, neither story shows up when you search on Goolnik's name.

At first glance, perhaps this seems reasonable. If Google has decided that a lawsuit against a company supposedly controlled by Goolnik is no longer relevant for those searching on Goolnik's name, then it's potentially reasonable to delink those results (though I have trouble seeing how the factual information that the lawsuit happened and that Goolnik was associated with it is no longer relevant. It seems abundantly relevant.)

However, the second order censorship here is much more troubling. Because the story is no longer about some long ago event which Goolnik might now wish to have hidden away in the depths. It's about his actions less than a year ago of likely filing for a right to be forgotten request. It's that news that both the NYT and Techdirt were reporting on. And that's not some "irrelevant" tidbit from history. That's recent, factual reporting.

So I'm at a loss as to how this latest bit of censorship could possibly be legit. And it raises some of the many concerns about the whole "right to be forgotten" concept. Is it really just limited to the supposedly out of date and "irrelevant" information? Or is it now supposed to extend to any reporting on the new and very relevant information about using the whole right to be forgotten process.

There is no official appeals process, other than that we can share "additional information regarding this content" that we feel "Google should be aware of" which may make the company reconsider -- though it also says "we can't guarantee responses." So it's just a blind "hey, that's crazy" and hoping common sense prevails. Or, you know, we'll keep writing about this story, because it's newsworthy no matter what the EU Court of Justice thinks or whatever whoever sent the request things, whether it's Thomas Goolnik or someone else.

* To be clear, the article itself doesn't fully disappear from Google's index, it just means that anyone who searches on the name of the person who made the RTBF request will no longer have the article show up under that search. Other searches may still turn up the article.